MOOC Provider edX Adds 15 Universities, Expands to Asia

EdX is a not-for-profit enterprise composed of 20+ leading global institutions, the xConsortium. Founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, edX is focused on transforming online and on-campus learning through groundbreaking methodologies, game-like experiences and cutting-edge research on an open source platform. EdX provides inspirational and transformative knowledge to students of all ages, social status, and income who form worldwide communities of learners.

Previously the xConsortium was composed of twelve leading institutions including founding universities MIT and Harvard, as well as the University of California – Berkeley, the University of Texas System, Wellesley College, Georgetown University, McGill University, Australian National University, University of Toronto, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Delft University of Technology and Rice University.

It will be gaining fifteen more schools including six from Asia including The University of Hong Kong, Kyoto University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,Perking University, Seoul National University and Tsinghua University. They will add to course offerings by including courses on subjects in science, engineering, humanities, social sciences, architecture, management, law, medicine, arts and design.

edX is also bringing on five more institutions from the US, three from Europe and another from Australia.

“As we continue to grow the xConsortium and offer courses from institutions as diverse as our global community of students, we are moving forward with our mission to reimagine education,” said Anant Agarwal, president of edX. “These schools, with their unique faculties and student bodies, will help us conduct collaborative research on best practices which improve education online and on campus.”

edX differs from other massive online courses (MOOCs) providers because they want to go much further then to simply offer quality free online courses. They are networking the world’s top universities on an open source educational platform in order to improve online and on campus education while conducting research on how students learn.

Thus far, edX has over 900,000 individuals on its platform.

In addition to these new institutions, edX recently launched more than 20 new courses ranging from HarvardX’s Science & Cooking to UTAustinX’s The Ideas of the 20th Century to DelftX’s Solar Energy to GeorgetownX’s Introduction to Bioethics to BerkeleyX’s Introduction to Statistics: Inference to MITx’s Mechanics ReView. These and other online and blended courses offered by xConsortium institutions are designed to take advantage of the unique features and benefits of online learning environments, including active learning, game-like experiences, instant feedback and cutting-edge virtual laboratories